


Borrowed Time and Borrowed World

by Hyperion327



Series: A Rock to Cling to While We Catch Our Breath [6]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Are you guys sensing a theme yet? Cause I sure am, Body Horror, Dark Derek Hale, Dark Stiles Stilinski, Gore, Implied/Referenced Cannibalism, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Post-apocalyptic road trips, Religious Discussion, Stand alone work, This is the third time I've used that road trip tag, Time Skips, Werewolf Stiles Stilinski
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:15:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23309761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hyperion327/pseuds/Hyperion327
Summary: Take in this sight. Take in the vast expanse of greyness, unrelenting and abandoned by the Gods. Taste the ash on your tongue, smell it on the scant wind. Listen to the roar of what was once the main artery of a continent, now clogged and rotten like the heart of some gout-ridden nobleman gasping his last. There was once a city here, now ash. There were once lives here, now dust. Giant burned out torches tower where trees once stood, the force and the flame burning away their leaves and limbs and leaving behind only blackened stakes that point to the glaucomatous sky like the site of a great witch burning.After the end, an alpha, his mate, and their pup make their way eastward, in the hopes of finding something, anything.
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Isaac Lahey/Scott McCall
Series: A Rock to Cling to While We Catch Our Breath [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/500134
Comments: 2
Kudos: 68





	Borrowed Time and Borrowed World

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is my love letter/tribute to Cormac McCarthy's magnum opus, _The Road_ , which I highly encourage all of you to read. It isn't a particularly pleasant story, and it has some pretty graphic descriptions of things but I think it has its moments. There's no suggested listening, as there is no music left to play here. Title is from the following quote from the book: 
> 
> _“He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.”_

The mate thinks they are in what might’ve been Colorado. The alpha says he thinks they’re in New Mexico. The pup asks what those places are. It’s a mostly semantic point anyway. Petty provincial boundaries from the old world don’t mean anything anymore. Only what is real, what is solid, only the corporeal has meaning. 

There are days when the mate still can’t believe they actually did it. This has been his reality for more than seven years, give or take, but he still can’t believe it actually happened. Ruminating on what happened does him no good. He must always think ahead, always think about the next meal, the next threat, the next opportunity. The past is gone, withered under a barren, grey sky and buried in the ashes of what was once called Earth. 

They walk. Sure, plenty of the cars that are abandoned on the roadside are probably functional, even with their inhabitants still locked inside, their withered corpses mummified in the long winter that came, but it’s stupid to try and drive one. An invitation to scavengers, cannibals, cultists or whatever else there is out there to mount an attack. They’ve been walking for so many years now. Towards what? They don’t know. The Mississippi, they suppose. Maybe all the way to the Atlantic. 

The pup asks questions about before, a lot of them. The mate was insistent on him learning to read, and they often choose to take shelter in libraries or schools when they must bed down for the night.

Papa, the pup asks. What is a Delorean? 

He mispronounces the word on an old poster in the town they’re walking through, one which had been hosting some sort of Eighties film festival when it all went down. 

An old car. The alpha replies. Like the one we used to drive you in, only different. 

There’s no more talk of Deloreans, or much of anything. They just keep walking.

**-Ω-**

“Derek!” Stiles yells. “We’re gonna be late!” 

Damned Sourwolf. For all the wolfy powers in the world, a sense of punctuality isn’t one, it seems. It’s Scott’s _wedding,_ for Christ’s sake! He and Isaac had been doing that goddamned dance for so long and when they finally got it together, they decided to wait on a wedding. Stiles is Scott’s best man and he will be dead and buried before he is late to the preparations, forget the ceremony. 

Scoffing with frustration, he yells again. “Seriously, Der, they’re gonna be on their way to Ireland by the time we get there!” 

“I’m ready.” Derek’s voice suddenly breaks from behind him, making Stiles jump and slap him on the shoulder of his very impressive tuxedo.

“Jesus, don’t do that, you ass!” He says, half umbraged and half amused. Derek just gives him a wry grin and a kiss on the cheek. 

“You ready?” He asks. “You look gorgeous.”

“So do you,” Stiles responds. “And yes, I am.”

**-Ω-**

They found the pup only a handful of months after, back when the snow still fell in pristine sheets of white and the nights and days were indeterminable from one another. The mate had long ago given up humanity out of necessity, and when they found the infant in the arms of his dead mother, a woman who had clearly hemorrhaged in giving birth to him, he had come out of the womb with sores, no doubt cancer-riddled already. 

The mate wouldn’t permit leaving him. It’s just _wrong!_ He had yelled. He’s just a baby!

The alpha had relented, flashing crimson eyes and long teeth, gently biting into the porous flesh of the newborn child. Both of them had expected the child to die, to convulse in the mate’s arms and vomit and piss and shit black bile and then be done with the world, born of violence and died of it, a twisted justice that the useless child that served only to weaken and cripple his already broken mother would be done in only hours later. But that wasn’t what happened. 

Instead, the sores on the infant’s skin and the glaucoma blinding him faded into the creamy skin of a newborn babe from before and a pair of stunning blue eyes. His few clumps of hair that were greyed from illness and malnutrition became chocolate brown, and his plaintive fusses became the strong belt of healthy lungs. His scent, which was ancient and sickly, became one of vitality and newness. The pup was born again, truly born this time, on a long night in which the wind screamed and toxins mingled with the snow to sicken all but the wolves. 

Years later, there is no more snow. There is only ash, ash that comes down on its own in slow, ghostly drifts or in the rain, mud and debris that cloys in the eyes and on the tongue. There is something strangely poetic about the fact that even in the cold and the darkness, there is no snow. It is as though, in those final seconds that the end came and the human race commit suicide, they murdered the seasons and the weather cycle itself, that the very earth would die. 

As they march along the road, the alpha holds a hand up, his eyes burning red. 

Smells like humans. The mate says, so quietly the alpha has to strain to hear it. Stay close, Connor. 

The alpha stalks up the hillside, laying himself flat against an outcropping of rock and looking down, spotting a group of sickly-looking humans, many of which tote worn out guns. They march along an old trail, and a group of chained up catamites drag a large wheeled cage, where a group of naked people struggle feebly against the ramshackle wooden enclosure. 

Cannibals, he calls back, looking at his pack. Group of ten, with seven captives. 

Der, we have to. 

No, we do not.

Papa, _please._

The alpha is usually helpless to his child’s pleas, and this time is no different. Fine, he grouses, but we’re not feeding them. 

Immediately, the three wolves are shifted, slipping their way up the ridge line and overlooking the scene. Confident they won’t be seen until it’s too late, the pack darts from tree to tree with practiced ease. Once they’re as close as they can be, the alpha lets out a piercing snarl, and they’re off. 

The mate snags the first kill, carefully snapping the neck of the nearest cannibal. The alpha is next, clawing the throats of two of them with a single swipe. The pup, meanwhile, uses his strength to shatter the wooden bars of the cage. By the time the last of the cannibals are dead, the pup has finished breaking the rusted manacles restraining the captives. 

Panting and blood-soaked, the two adult wolves turn to face the trembling, naked humans, their rail-thin forms marred by sores and bald patches. The alpha speaks up.

Take their clothes, their supplies, whatever, we don’t care. Just don’t get captured again. He instructs. 

W-what are you? One of them, a younger woman, asks. 

Werewolves, and we’re not the only supernatural type out there. Anyone who isn’t covered in sores like you lot, they’re probably some kind of magic. The alpha answers. Stiles, Connor, let’s go. 

They keep moving east.

**-Ω-**

“Seriously, Scotty, quit worrying!” Stiles says. “He’s not gonna leave you at the altar. Isaac’s been head over ass for you since we were _fifteen!”_

The fretful groom-to-be sighs, running a hand through his hair. “It’s just… what if he realizes-” 

“Scott Andrew, shut up and stop messing up your hair.” Melissa instructs. “I spent half an hour on it, and that non-clumping hairspray is a bitch to work with. Isaac loves you like you hung the moon, he’s not going anywhere.” 

Meanwhile, in another suite in the same San Francisco hotel, Isaac is, for once in his life, the sanguine one in the situation, and he and Derek have just raised two glasses of whiskey that’s laced with wolfsbane in a toast. 

“To Boyd and Erica. Wherever they are, I hope they’re together.” Isaac says.

“Hear, hear.” The alpha responds. “Cora sends her love, by the way. She wishes she could make it, but getting passage out of the Amazon is a hard thing to do during the wet season.” 

The other groom smiles wryly. “I’m sure she’s probably fighting a jaguar as we speak.” 

“Sounds like her.” Derek snorts. “Stiles and I were talking about a trip down to see her once the dry season rolls through.” 

“If you do go, make sure she knows I send my best. And bring me back a python or something, Scott _hates those.”_

The two men break into boyish chuckles before calming. Without speaking, they sip on their glasses, and Derek is helpless but to feel a deep spike of pride for his beta. To have grown from that fragile little boy to this charming, proud, _brilliant_ man on his wedding day is such an accomplishment, and he is so damn proud of Isaac for it. 

**-Ω-**

Another few months roll by. A roadside sign told them three days ago they were entering Kansas. The mate laughs that he was right, and the alpha rolls his eyes but grins, slinging an arm around the other man and kissing his temple. The pup makes a disgusted noise, but he giggles nonetheless, and leans against the mate’s side. 

Dad? What are we walking to? 

The mate smiles down at his son. I don’t know, but there’s nothing for us where we came from, right? 

Right. The pup confirms. 

So, we’re gonna walk until we find what we’re looking for. Maybe it’ll be a new home, or a community, or a pack of wolves, or something we don’t even know what. 

The alpha chimes in. And even if we don’t find anything, it’ll be okay, because we’re always gonna have each other. 

Always?

The mate grins down at his son. Yeah, kiddo, always. 

They keep walking on until the featureless grey sky overhead begins to darken. Conveniently, they’ve just reached the outskirts of some town called Dighton. The little bump on the map is so small that the whole city is within the pack’s hearing range, and the boys are able to pick up that it’s deserted.

The house they bed down in is the largest, and by far in the best condition. A house that didn’t collapse at least halfway under the weight of an ice age’s worth of snow is a rare find in this part of the country, where the infrastructure hasn’t been up to date since before the 1950’s. 

The two mates grab the master bedroom, while they put the pup in a heavy nest of old blankets and pillows in the bathtub of the en-suite master bath, making sure that the only way to access their offspring is through them. Once the pup’s breathing becomes low and even, the mate curls around the alpha, hands wandering to risky areas. 

Der, it’s been _months,_ he whispers. We haven’t had a chance like this in so long. 

The alpha chuckles. A proper bed to fuck on, how long has it been? 

Too damn long. He replies, letting his hand drift into his mate’s worn out underwear and curl around his prize.

 _Oh, Stiles…_ He gasps, before rolling them over to take control. 

**-Ω-**

The wedding is a wonderful affair, and Stiles isn’t even afraid to admit he teared up when Scott and Isaac finally kissed, sealing their union. Now, he and Derek whirl about the dance floor to a bright, poppy song, laughing as they catch sight of John with Melissa in his arms, both blushing like teenagers as they dance. 

They often wonder what the future holds for them. For the moment, they’ve just contented themselves to being together, plain and simple, but now, who knows? If Scott and Isaac are ready to tie the knot so young, perhaps so are they. 

After the dancing ends and the last of the food has been eaten, the wedding party itself makes its way to the airport to see the newlyweds off. Clearing security, they all march to the gate together. 

“Have fun in Ireland, man.” Stiles says, pulling his best friend in close and holding him there for a long time. “Take care of each other.” 

Scott laughs, his voice thick with emotion. “We always will, dude.” 

Meanwhile, Derek and Isaac have their own similar embrace. “Let me know as soon as you land,” The elder instructs. “And make sure you two actually see more of Dublin than just your hotel room.” 

“Ass,” Isaac snickers. “We will, I promise. And Der? Thank you; for… well, everything. For this incredible life.” 

“Nah, kid, _you_ made this life incredible. Go enjoy the next chapter.” 

With those farewells, the group watches as Scott and Isaac board their flight to Ireland, and remain at the gate long enough to see the plane take off and soar eastward. Once the craft has vanished from sight, they make their way back into the main concourse, which is right when the sound of hundreds of people’s phones screaming with alarm all at once fills the room, while the various television screens all cut to the emergency broadcast feed.

**-Ω-**

Dawn is the same unrelenting grey as dusk, as it has been for years now. The pup is awake first, and slips out of the bathroom where he slept to find the one furthest from the master which has been designated as the actual commode. Once he’s relieved himself, he pops his head back into the room where his fathers sleep, and decides not to wake them. 

The pup decides to explore for a bit, seeking out the rest of the house, which they didn’t get a chance to explore with the lateness of the night. Slipping down the dust-covered stairs, he lets his nose guide him into the kitchen, searching out the cupboards for anything that might still be edible, and lucks out, finding the plastic-sealed bricks of ramen noodles. Laying them out on the table, he slips into the living room, looking at the curious black slab mounted over the fireplace. 

_TV,_ his mind supplies, _like that little one when we had the Jeep._

That’s right, it’s a TV. They used to have a little portable one that played movies off of little circles, but it got left with the Jeep somewhere near the Grand Canyon. The pup catches a scent on a draft blowing through the house, and goes to a closed door off of the dining room. Turning the handle, the musty smell of decay fills his nose, and he steps into the study to find a mummified corpse slumped over the desk, a hole in each of its temples, a gun in its hand, and years-old blood spatter painting the bookshelf to the mummy’s left. 

When he once asked his Papa why all the bodies in the buildings always looked like that, he explained to the pup that there were once things called bacteria and bugs that made bodies turn into skeletons like they see on the roads, but that most of them died after it happened, meaning that only the weather was effective at stripping bodies. This left all the ones that were safe from the elements to just slowly dry out like the jerky they sometimes found. 

The body is dressed in clothes that might have been fancy once, but the white button up is stained brown by the decay of its flesh, and the fabric of the black suit jacket has frayed and faded with years of sitting out. The corpse’s hair is a chestnut brown, and a quick look around the room reveals a photo of what is presumably the man, with his arms wrapped around a beautiful woman and a little girl. He was young, and the pup feels quite bad for him. Next to his body is a folded sheet of paper, which the pup reads.

_My name is Daniel Jessup. My wife Val and daughter Catherine were in Boston visiting family, and I won’t try to survive without them. Take what you need, and good luck._

The note is dated for the eighth of May, 2022. Two days after. A spike of regret floods through the pup at the realization that this man had nothing left, and so, when the clouds started rolling in and hiding the sun, he went into his study, put on his nicest suit, and ended his life. 

Connor! The alpha’s voice calls from upstairs. What are you doing? 

There’s a body here. The pup answers, knowing he will hear regardless of how softly he answers. He was the owner. 

He can hear as the alpha walks down to the steps and rounds the corner into the dining room, before stepping into the study. The pup holds up the note, passing it to his father. See? 

Yeah, I see, buddy. He answers. Let’s leave it be, it’s for the best. 

Later that morning, they move on. 

**-Ω-**

St. Louis was once the gateway to the west. Now it’s their gate back eastward. The Mississippi River, a sluice of grey a mile wide, rages like a tempest, even if the atmosphere is lucky to conjure a breeze that can lift the hair that hangs on their sallow, ash-covered heads. Since it began, they’ve religiously avoided the cities. The ones that survived turned into nightmares where the worst of humanity consumed each other. Long after the clouds were dispersed on the wind, mankind burned the last of his great settlements in the chaos and fear that followed. 

St. Louis is little more than a debris-strewn crater. Great twists of metal and concrete are all that remain of mighty skyscrapers. One of the Gateway Arch’s legs still stands, its rusted surface breaking high into the unyielding sky, perhaps a final fuck you to the end of the world. I’m still standing, you cocksuckers, it says, you can’t break me that easily. The gridded streets of the ruinous settlement are clotted with debris and metal slag where the cars were boiled where they sat, and they carefully navigate around them as they keep a watch for anyone else. 

By some blessing, one of the bridges has managed to remain standing, which has spared them the agony of wandering north until they can find their way across the Mississippi, or if they’re really fucked, route all the way up to Minnesota to go around it. The pack shifts, afraid of potential ambushes as they march their way across, but none are to be found. When they’ve gotten all the way across, the alpha crouches down, and takes a fistful of the ashy dirt in his hand. It’s cold.

How many pilgrims walked this road? How many charred, mutated, cancerous survivors limped across this bridge in the hopes of finding some semblance of what once was, only to be swallowed whole by the dark? Goddamn them, goddamn every one of them. Had they known better, had they seen the danger, would they not still live? Would the sun not still shine on a world blossoming into its own? Would mothers not still hold their babies, rather than birth some cursed thing only to consume its flesh for their own survival? 

Take in this sight. Take in the vast expanse of greyness, unrelenting and abandoned by the Gods. Taste the ash on your tongue, smell it on the scant wind. Listen to the roar of what was once the main artery of a continent, now clogged and rotten like the heart of some gout-ridden nobleman gasping his last. There was once a city here, now ash. There were once lives here, now dust. Giant burned out torches tower where trees once stood, the force and the flame burning away their leaves and limbs and leaving behind only blackened stakes that point to the glaucomatous sky like the site of a great witch burning. 

The child has never seen the sun, has never seen the stars, has never seen his mother moon, even when he feels her call. There are plenty of other children out there whose fate is the same, or worse, born only to die. Little toddlers stuttering out their first words, only to have their families found by the wrong lot, and they become nothing more than piles of steaming shit left next to the bones their infantile flesh was stripped from while their killers slip away to find another set of victims to fill their stomachs.

See this world of ash and rust, this world of bone and blood. Breathe its poisoned air, drink its toxic water. Eat, drink, and be goddamned, because you let this happen. Die choking, racked by cancers and sores. Die shitting your organs out as radiation denatures your DNA and your flesh liquifies inside of you. Die alone, slowly and painfully. Die surrounded by those you love, hearing their screams for mercy as they are raped and murdered, dismembered and consumed, and so are you. Die, you motherfucker, die a billion deaths because this is your fault.

It’s everyone’s fault.

**-Ω-**

From the first blaring of the alarms to the first stampede of the crowd is closer to twenty seconds than thirty. In an instant, Derek loses everyone else. Consequences be damned, he lets his eyes go red, and shoves through the undulating sea of terrified humans with the force of a car. He sends man and woman alike flying, gravely injuring them, but he can’t care. All he can think is _Stiles, Stiles, Stiles,_ a mantra in his brain that demands he protect his mate. 

Leaping atop a kiosk, he searches through the thousands of sprinting humans with only the intact mate bond to let him know that Stiles is alive, as the scent of panic and the screams of horror coming from _everyone_ is completely overwhelming. Terrified he may not find him, Derek prepares to start ripping his way through the crowd manually, when at least, Stiles appears across the concourse, leaning against the massive windows and frantically searching for Derek. 

Their eyes lock across the crowd, and Derek steps back, getting a running start for the flying leap that will carry him over the rushing herd. Tucking himself into a tight ball, he doesn’t even register the feeling of the glass embedding itself in his skin as he powers through the window and out onto the sunlit tarmac of the runway. 

“Stiles!” He screams. “Jump down, I’ll catch you!” 

The human does so without even hesitating, and it’s too easy for Derek to position his arms to catch him and absorb the excess energy of the considerable drop to make it as soft as possible. Without a word, he transfers Stiles onto his back, and takes off running to a gate near the heart of the complex that is dead silent. 

“What about my dad and Melissa?!” Stiles yells, “We have to find them!” 

Derek growls out a negative. “There’s no time! They’re both smart, they know to get to the most stable part of the building!” 

The werewolf gives it everything he has in order to leap up thirty feet onto the jetbridge. Once there, he deposits Stiles back on his feet, and the two men sprint down the collapsible hallway to the door, which Derek kicks open with enough force to send it careening across the empty boarding area and embed it into the opposite wall. 

“We have to get as close to the center of the building as possible!” He yells, taking off running while the television screens all scream that there are only a handful of minutes left. The EAS has taken over any channels broadcasting, and the echo of the alarms raises hell with his werewolf hearing. 

With perhaps a minute or two remaining, they reach a security door that’s made of steel, and, by some blessing, has been left cracked. The pair slip into the room, which is small and windowless, lit only by a single flickering fluorescent. With the door shut and deadbolted, they sag against the walls, breathing heavily. 

“Is this- is this really happening? Couldn’t it be like Hawaii?” Stiles pants. 

“I don’t know,” Derek replies, “But we can’t take that chance.” 

He goes to respond, but, all at once, the loudest, most unholy sound either of them have ever heard fills the room, and any hope of a false alarm is gone. _They really fucking did it,_ Stiles thinks to himself as their shelter begins to shake and the light dies out. Derek fishes out his phone to turn on its flashlight, but it too is dead, as is his own. The electromagnetic pulse, no doubt. 

He runs into his mate’s arms, burying his face in the crux of his neck and kissing the very spot he’d bitten through to claim Derek as his. “‘Love you.” He murmurs into the flesh as the ceiling tiles begin to fall. 

“I love you, too.” 

Long after silence has fallen, they stir, both of them coughing from the dust and debris filling the room. “Stiles,” Derek calls, “Are you alright?”

“Fine, what about you?” 

“I’m good.” He says. “We have to get out of here.” 

The wolf makes his way to the door, and after unbolting it, pushes, only to find it will not budge. Without second thought, he steps back, before throwing his entire weight and all of the strength of an alpha werewolf into it, forcing a great clatter as the door pushes aside debris, only for a putrid orange light to fill the darkened space. 

Fires burn everywhere, and they both choke on the smoke as they navigate towards the blown-out windows of the gate. This time, Derek takes Stiles in his arms before making the leap down to the tarmac, which is strewn with debris, most of which still glows or smolders. There are even torched bodies on the pavement, along with the flaming wrecks of dozens airplanes, flipped and thrown like they were toys by the force of the blast.

Once they make it out onto the singed dirt which was once the grass between runways and are able to look north of the ruined airport, Stiles gasps out loud, falling to his knees in the cinders. “God Almighty…” He chokes out. 

Where once the city of San Francisco stood, a mushroom cloud that is miles high and black as night, backlit with orange by the raging fires within, now blossoms and blots out the sun, turning the world into a torch-lit twilight.

**-Ω-**

The mate did not have faith before. A man who watched his mother go slowly mad until her death when he was just a boy is never usually the churchgoing type, and he was no exception. In the initial days, however, when there was a car, and the sun still managed to peek its way through the smoke-laden atmosphere and he was struggling to adjust to his new status as a werewolf, he picked up a bundle of holy texts from a looted bookstore. 

The Bible, the Torah, the Quran, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Veda, all of them came nice and neat in plastic shrinkwrap, which he tore through as he sought some form of balm for his decimated soul. He found no one God which called to him, but did find a form of faith, and a belief in a God of sorts, which has been helpful in the darkest of these dark hours, when the danger was greatest, or when they were on the brink of starvation. 

Since then, whenever he had a chance, he has stopped at a church, synagogue, mosque, or any other such holy site that they stumble across. Without fail, there are always many bodies inside. The faithful came to their prayer sites to beg their Gods for salvation, or to seek shelter from those who would harm them, and some even came to end their own lives, praying that their suicides would be forgiven if taken place in the house of the Lord, for who could fault anyone for wanting escape from something infinitely worse than Hell? 

Those books the mate devoured in the early days are long gone, but he still holds many of their messages in his heart, and they still inform his prayers. In a world where you have nothing, conjure your ceremonies from memory and ash, for what is ash but the living memory of the thing it was before? Breathe life back into death, if only for a moment, he reasons, because as long as one of them lives, so do the rest. 

Humanity’s legacy is not in the ruins, but in those living amongst them. The charred skeletons and leveled cities mean nothing, for it is those who still eek out their existences in the most barely habitable of spaces that keep meaning alive. He has seen evil, yes. He has done evil, yes, but looking at the dusky blue eyes and mop of chocolate curls on the boy they have, he is sure that good lives just as strongly as evil. 

While the alpha and the pup slink through a half-collapsed store across the street in search of food, the mate walks into the stone church in the small Illinois town. The thing was built like a miniature cathedral, though the steeple has long collapsed, and the vaulted ceiling gave away under the weight of years’ worth of nuclear winter, crushing the long dead corpses in its many pews. Underneath the open sky, he slips along the aisle to the altar, and kneels before the humble wooden cross on the far wall, its ceramic figure of Christ having long ago slipped off and shattered into pieces. 

_Dear God,_ he prays, _Protect him. Protect my son, above all else. I will kill and die for him. I will abdicate my personhood, surrender my own flesh and sanity for Connor. I will give up Derek and all memory of him if it means my child will live. Please, keep him safe. If he was born, it was not to die. If he was bitten, it was not to be consumed. If he was made innocent, it was not to be violated. Protect my son, please._

The unyielding, autistic dark is all that God answers with.

After a few moments of silent meditation, the mate stands and makes his way out through the ancient wooden doors, just in time for the alpha and pup to emerge from the grocery store across the strike. The pup holds a can triumphantly in his hands, smiling as wide as the banished moon at the treasured Chef Boyardee, a treat they haven’t had in months. 

He once told the alpha, without hesitation, that there is nothing he would not do to protect their son. No price too high, no sin too grave. He would piece together the warheads and detonate them all over again if it meant the boy would be safe. The mate made it infinitely clear that even the other was not exempt from that rule. The pup is the absolute priority, and there is nothing that could ever change that. He wasn’t the least bit shocked when the alpha looked him dead in the face and told him he would tear out the mate’s still-beating heart without thought to protect their child. If anything, it made him fall in love with him all the more. 

They bed down in the master suite of a roadside motel, taking the risk of making a fire in the hideous, seventies-era fireplace to heat up their prize, which, even now eight years stale, is the best thing any of them have tasted since the last time they were able to have it. When the flames are extinguished and their supplies are prepared for the continued trek eastward come the morning, the mate curls next to the alpha on the bed, sighing. 

Where are we going? He asks. There’s nothing here. There might not be anything anywhere. 

The alpha gnaws on his badly chapped lip, rubbing a hand through his unkempt hair and scratching at the beard which will soon need to be dealt with by the small pair of rusty scissors in the mate’s pack. I don’t know, he confesses. Maybe Upstate New York? I had family there. 

Der, those winters are brutal, and we don’t even know what time of year it is. We could be walking into a frozen waste.

We don’t have a choice, Stiles. We need to find something permanent for Connor, something that’s just in the neighborhood of safety. He argues. There has to be _something._

Ask, and ye shall receive, for if the mate has learned one thing, it is that God is generous, even in a world where there is nothing left to give but death and decay.

**-Ω-**

Two days later, as they muck their way through a place once called southern Illinois, there is _something._ The mate senses it a tenth of a second before it happens, too late to even formulate a warning as the alpha’s boot, held together with duct tape and willpower, hits the tripwire and sends the arrow flying directly into his chest. Luckily, there’s enough time to turn, and the projectile buries itself in his right lung, rather than into the heart it was bound for. 

Five heartbeats make themselves known as the alpha cries out. Stiles, run! He bellows. Take him and run! 

He goes to do just that, but the figures appear from the trees, and another arrow screams through the air, this one putting itself in the mate’s thigh, while a third pierces the gut of the pup, who screams in ungodly agony, falling to the muddy, leaf-strewn ground. _Not like this,_ the mate thinks, _please, not like fucking this._ He hobbles his way to his offspring, letting himself shift as the alpha tears the arrow from his lung with a great roar. 

Shi-it! A coarse voice pierces the air, far too jovial. We got ourselves another pack! 

The mate looks up, and sees that the five figures, while rail thin and covered and ash and dirt like every other living person, have sets of glowing blue eyes and a skin far too clear to be human. The one exception is the man who spoke, whose eyes burn red like the long vanished sun. 

He is tall, and may once have been handsome, but no one is even attractive anymore. The only worthy lover, the only beautiful one left, is Death, and though this alpha brings death, he is not him, and so, he is just as hideous as the rest of them. The betas, all tainted with the blood innocents probably thousands of times over, rush in to restrain them and the mate snarls and roars with everything he has, kicking and clawing as one grabs the pup by the scruff of his neck and drags him along, ignoring his agonized sobs as he struggles to extract the arrow from his stomach. 

The alpha is no better, roaring and cursing and promising to make them beg for death for just looking at the boy. The attackers, however, just laugh and snicker at their antics. For good measure, one of the betas, a bald, skeletal figure who casts a pathetic form for a werewolf, leans down to sniff at the rear of the pup, and grins with a mouthful of fangs. 

Been a long time since I’ve had one that hasn’t already been used. Bet he’ll scream _real_ pre-

The would-be rapist is silenced as, from nowhere, a bullet breaks through his skull and paints its contents in glorious crimson across the grey palette of the ashy ground. A second and third shot make similar displays of beautiful art, flashes of white bone and pink brain adding to the colorful mix from two more of the betas. The leader and the last surviving beta make a scramble for it, only for the alpha and the mate to catch up in a handful of strides and hurl them to the ground.

Perhaps once, the alpha would’ve struggled against one the same rank as him, especially an older and more experienced opponent, but the blood of his child was spilled, and so he is as an archangel, like the flaming sword of the lord unleashing holy vengeance. He starts by raking his claws across the other alpha’s skin until his chest and arms are flayed clean, and then takes pleasure in slicing the tendons in his wrists, shoulders, and elbows, before peeling back the fat and muscle of the abdomen to expose the ribcage, all while the fool who dared touch his son lets out screams out in a chorus that make the most beautiful song the alpha has heard since the siren call of his mate’s soul called out to him. 

The mate, for his part, is ruthless in his efficiency, burying his claws into the beta’s vertebrae and severing her spinal cord high enough to keep her from struggling but low enough to make sure she feels everything. Turning her over, he snaps her arms at the shoulders, and then takes great pleasure in letting his fangs flash as he tears into the flesh until he’s gnawed through the bone and her arm is completely detached. He does the same to the other, and then rears back, taking in her agonized, terrified face before he dives in and uses his teeth to tear the visage that smiled at their pain from its host. 

By the time the two of them are finished with their quarries, the pup has removed the arrow from his stomach, and rushes over to his fathers, who have stood to search for their mysterious saviors. Daddy, Papa! The boy cries, sprinting over to them and wrapping an arm around each of their legs. 

They both let out subvocal purrs to calm their crying son as they guide him behind them, turning to face the two figures that approach from the hillside, each with a rifle slung over their shoulder. The passage of time, the still-thrumming adrenaline of the danger, and the murkiness of the day conspire to make recognition of them nigh-impossible, which is why the mate and the alpha are so truly floored when a voice neither of them ever thought they’d hear again breaks. 

Derek?! Stiles?! One of the men cries out, flashing golden eyes. 

Impossible. Absolutely impossible, and yet, here they are, thin, filthy, with too long hair and scruffy beards, but rapturous joy on their faces. The mate’s eyes film over with tears as he takes in the sight of the man he called his brother since he was a toddler, and the alpha’s do the same when they take in his very first beta. After all, God is generous, even when there is nothing left to give. Scott and Isaac, alive, and _here._

As if it weren't enough, for just a moment, for the first time in nearly a decade, the clouds thin, and the light of the sun falls on them unfiltered, saturating the reunion in honey gold. It lasts a second, maybe less, but it could’ve lasted for the rest of time for all the weight it lifts from their burdened souls. _Maybe I was wrong,_ the mate muses, _maybe there is something left to give._

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed my very personal indictment of the concept of nuclear weapons and how we, as a society, let them exist. Drop your thoughts, please and thanks.


End file.
